


Locked

by Lokei



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-10
Updated: 2006-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He began to understand why Davy Jones kept his heart locked away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Locked

He had never known such pain. He had thought so before of course—when his mother died, when his father took hold of the cat o’nine tails—those were pains he had not thought to survive, and he had.

This, however, was worse. It was that moment in the cave when Jack had casually dropped the news that Elizabeth had agreed to marry Norrington magnified three times over, and stuck with a thousand needles sharp as the face of Davy Jones’ pufferfished second mate. Magnified once over when Elizabeth had kissed a man other than her fiancé, magnified twice by the fact that at least the first time Will hadn’t expected her to return his feelings and now he did, and magnified a third time because this time it wasn’t ramrod proper Norrington but slouching, slovenly, scandalous Jack Sparrow, a pirate, hideously unsuited for a Governor’s daughter—and Will’s friend. She had just kissed Jack, desperately and hungrily, and Jack had kissed her back.

And Will saw it all. His friend, his beloved, he had termed them. But perhaps neither of them had been his all along.

He began to understand why Davy Jones kept his heart locked away. From where Will was sitting it seemed a reasonable and tempting choice.

But then the Kraken pulled the battered but still beautiful _Pearl_ below the waves, and suddenly everyone was looking to Will, as they had all along this crazy venture, for a guidance and a leadership that Will wasn’t sure was still his to give.

Everyone was looking at him. Save Elizabeth.

Will’s eyes burned but he blinked hard, locking away the image of her empty gaze searching an emptier horizon. “Row for land,” he said woodenly.

Gibbs gave him a long look—there was something both frightened and hopeful in his gaze that made Will suddenly unbearably weary.

“What is it, Gibbs?”

The old sailor fidgeted a moment. “This is her island,” he muttered finally, and Will’s face twisted in acknowledgement of the bitter irony.

“Her?” asked Elizabeth finally, but Will, for once in his life, ignored her.

“Gibbs,” he put as much command into his voice as he could muster, “I feel a need to go upriver.”

“Aye, cap’n,” Gibbs replied as everyone in the boat flinched at his unconscious deeding of that title to Will.

The rest of the trip was spent in near silence as dusk fell and darkness grew and the cutter made its aching progress under the moss-laden boughs of the bayou. A thousand points of light burned for the vanquished captain and kindled answering reflections in Elizabeth’s eyes, but Will did not see them.

The door to Tia Dalma’s hut swung open silently, and if Elizabeth was appalled by the jars of eyes and skins of snakes, or gave any reaction at all, Will did not see it either.

He heard Gibbs begin a long explanation, cut short by Tia Dalma’s knowing gaze. She disappeared into the back then, and Will found himself in a chair without remembering sitting down. He was conscious of the others ranged about the room, a paltry fraction of those that had begun the voyage, and he began flicking his father’s knife into the unforgiving tabletop, counting out the dead in a steady ceaseless rhythm. But somewhere along the way it turned into a different kind of reckoning.

Each bite of the knife made a deeper gouge as Will pried the blade from the wood. He barely noticed the scars he was leaving on the table, seeing instead Jack’s face as Will rowed to the _Flying Dutchman_ , his father’s face when Will promised not to abandon him, and the last moments of the _Pearl_ and her captain.

Betrayal stung worse than rum, the smell of which now pervaded the hut as Tia Dalma returned with something warm and rum-soaked.

“For the cold, and the sorrow,” he heard her say, and with the mug available his hands found something else to hold and the monotonous thunk of the knife, so reminiscent of hammer on anvil, was silenced.

Staring into the steaming liquid, Will knew no knife nor hammer could remove the events of the past few days. The rhythm might help him think, the blade might pare those thoughts to their sharpest edge, but nothing would make them vanish nor drown.

Outside his silence the others were toasting Jack, and Will raised his glass but could not bring himself to drink. He heard Elizabeth’s voice break, and for the first time he saw the emptiness, the guilt in her eyes.

He could not know what occurred between them when he was gone, could not know if she had abandoned him completely.

But it did not matter, of a sudden.

After all, he was Will Turner. He had risked everything to save her, repeatedly. More often and in more ways than she could know, he had put himself in danger to stand between threat and the one he loved.

He was Will Turner, who braved the hangman for the life of a pirate and braved eternal servitude for the love of a father he hadn’t seen in twenty years.

He would brave more to bring the life back into her eyes, even if it meant he lost her forever.

The realization was swift and suddenly Will was on his feet, reconciliation in his tone.

“If there were anything I could do,” he offered.

Because he was Will Turner, and when it came to Elizabeth Swann, for good or for ill, his heart was anything but locked.


End file.
